poetry is dead

a lone gunman blows the smoke barrel

and afterward falls asleep on the grass

in what used to be a park surrounded by

flora with smog coated leaves.

the screams from the public sphere

are faint, only one ambulance siren

is heard under the gratuitous rigmarole

filling toothless restaurants and 

alley corners of questionable intent.

he dreams of the muse he just

shot through the dead, tired as he was

of clever words and contrary actions,

he aimed his pistol and let off a shot.

in his sleep he had no dreams

and when he woke up

he yawned and bought a newspaper,

making note that there was no advertising

no sports page either.

Movement

Movement, a poem by Wyn Cooper, is one of those poems that irritates you because it starts off  well and ends in nothing less than a gasping whimper .We are to make note of all the movement that occurs in this narrative, the countryside the narrator, speaking to a nameless companion, speaks of . The tone is nostalgic, the recounting of annoyances fondly recalled. But time goes on, life advances from one neighborhood to another, one terrain for another completely unlike it. One moves and attempts to be quickly assimilated by something more urban, bustling, impatient, impolite, a city that narrator doesn't want to discuss, not for long. 

This is the pun contained in the title, an obvious ploy from the get go; the irony, I suppose, would be that the weather, the relative stillness, the lack urgency in the bucolic ruins of fading America are not, in fact, cursed with inertia, as the speaker addresses the particulars with telling , nearly idealized detail. An implied sigh accompanies the pause between first and second stanza; this is the part of the conversation where the speaker is lost in thought and averts his eyes, falls into a melancholy that dares him to speak what he is not able to find words for.  The poem goes from being fairly specific to  vague and euphemistic. The effect is spoiled by Wyn Cooper's need to sum up the inchoate morass seething under the surface of these well mannered images; 

"...before we
settled in a city of other movements,
found new rhythms that suit us better,
we tell ourselves over and over. "

The poem is a nice if other unremarkable presentation of the low level anxiety that haunts the suburbs of John Cheever, an American master short story writer and novelist who brilliantly explored a generation of the white middle class that had to distract themselves with drugs, adultery and workaholism to deaden the collective suspicion that the lifestyle and manicured neighborhoods they chose for themselves are life less manifestations of a culture that has mistakes material gain as the point of existence. Cheever, though, was much subtler and more lyrical as he wrote of his characters attempts to fill an emptiness that will not be healed. Cooper  had some more writing to do to make this idea work; the poem just quits suddenly and the screen one imagines this  monologue being played against goes blank.  The last sentence reveals an unwillingness to see this thing through. The poet is unsure how he wants to talk about this string of related icons.

Before we start

Before we start
lets place a dime next to our plates
to tell us where the chatter stops
when the words get hard as the water
in the streaked water glass.
I could stop on a dime
back in the day
when I drove a station wagon
to the store,a trail of tread
behind me showing me
every light I skirted.
It was your skirt that turned my head
when I stopped for a paper,
fingering the dashboard ashtray
for a dime.
All those screaming headlines
never stopped coming,
the news didn't change
when we married
after months of talking about
current events as we ate
Asian take out.
Today I drive
nothing but trivial paths,
you are the keeper of the dimes
and the traction in the tread of my shoes,

I sing your name
when I buy a paper,
you are the music
the headlines never had.

A credo mislaid

A CREDO MISLAID

Not this day or that

or even a day in spring

when I might sing

or dance three—legged across the floor

hailing the end of the night

as another eve of

hedged bets,

Not even a month of Sundays

could cajole easy praise for

proper nouns naming roads

that honor killers

stitched together with

the cheapest-oar

the pins won’t stick,

the alibis won’t adhere

to St. Peter's beard,

Never in the lightest years

would I dream denying the

truth of a

small flower blooming across the street

from a three car pile—up:

Irony is cheap

when the market bears a grudge.

        

 

 

Karma

There is a gun
in the kitchen drawer and 

ants in the pantry,

your is husband ,

drunk on the couch, as always,

'though sunshine
expected in the after life

unless it's canceled
and replaced with reruns.

In fishing stories I read

In fishing stories I read
a slither of histories that peal

drying on the gray wooden deck
and get pried loose by a youngster
who has no idea that

there's anything more important

than finding a dollar
in the street and putting it
in his back pocket, for keeps.

As is, flies buzz around
the lights in bow-tie formations,

poised at a minute in history
when I couldn't do anything else

except watch as they dive bomb
they seem to worship.

Detroit cars and sand dunes

in towns forgotten by interstates
pull down my eyelids

like the whispered fringe of Andrew Wyeth drapery,
wheat fields surrounded by large sky and spectral maps,
someone tonight is in the highest building

on the water front playing cards
as the cow jumps over the moon

and the spoon finds a drawer
to sleep in until a meal appears
as if by a magic that makes
the heart sink.

An Idea of Fantastic Moonlight

An idea of fantastic moonlight

on the water's wavering surface,

we are concentric in our desires

for the rest of the meal,

it's only during full moons

when the dogs feel like singing

and the trains and trolleys,

running along parallel tracks,

to screech and whistle and yowl

into the black slants of downtown

in the iron grey sheen of lunar gleaning

that makes the arid

and thirsty with desire as all the cars

rattle in line and the steel wheels

grind around the bends of the tracks that

move between buildings of cracked brick

and scarred, grey cement,

cutting through old neighborhoods

where trains are go to and come from

places distant as the face of the moon

rippling and quivering in snaking white lines

from the horizon, over the water,

to the beach and the mirrored hardness

of the sand,

I want to you scratch my back

and rub my neck,

you are saying, turning around in your seat,

your computer screen on a web page decorated with

floral print and drawings of naked men,

there is so much left to write about before deadline,

there's a mountain of data that needs indexing and

some other line of scrutiny, you place a finger

over my lips, you say Listen and there are barking dogs,

car horns and train whistles sounding

in cryptic orchestrations, shrill,

and thirsty among the ashen hues

the full moon brings us,

it's time to let data just pile up

so we can pile on each other

and books fall to the floor

as they would in perfect love stories,

The camera pulls away and floats to the window

to settle on an image of the full moon,

the full moon would be smiling, yes

but no, not that, clouds drift over the orb

and the world loses some of

the grey glow,

yet the sound don't change,

whether trains, dogs, cars stalled on an over pass,

both of us stuck on each other,

noises stuck on the black tarp of evening.

You turn your head,

you cough and recover,

hand at your throat,

the mike buzzes but not before,

You shuffle your poems

and read yet again,

you go on in a room

where everyone has a first line,

I would read about your eyes,

Wide as they are as saucers,

cups that are deep as pans of bread

that come from the oven

and into my heart,

and that's a start, I think,

You fold your hands

on the podium as you read;

you've got this memorized,

yet it all seems extemporized

from the bottom of your heart

which hasn't a bottom at all,

Now some one else reads,

a guy with tattoo of his tongue

across his left cheek, he screeches

to hip- hop clicks of a clock,

but he's young and

not far from done as long as

His homies throw their signs

with fingers that cross a language

of quieting the flutters of the untested heart,

I will read you later, on the phone,

with every court and hand gesture,

you wave goodnight, I know the line,

You'll see me in the funny papers.